In recent years, LGBTQIA+ communities have witnessed a wave of Pride events that position themselves in partial or direct contrast to mainstream Pride celebrations such as London Pride or Brighton Pride. This phenomenon represents a global shift in the landscape of LGBTQIA+ organising and presents important challenges and opportunities for LGBTQIA+ activists worldwide (Ammaturo 2025).
Alternative Pride Events create spaces for communities who feel excluded or underserved by mainstream celebrations, such as trans people, Black and Brown LGBTQIA+ individuals, queer women, and disabled people (Mbasalaki 2018; Podmore 2016). Such events frequently challenge the corporate, commercialised, and exclusionary aspects of mainstream Pride (Currans 2012; Ammaturo 2025), reclaiming Pride as a site of protest, solidarity, and visibility.
This presentation shows how Alternative Pride Events offer an intersectional perspective on the lived realities and activism of marginalised groups within LGBTQIA+ movements. This will be achieved by deploying theories of horizontal hostility (Ghaziani 2008) and political agonism (Mouffe 2014), which can explain cross-collaboration and conflicts between social movements, to the rise and success of Alternative Pride Events, building on fieldwork with 60 pride organisers from 29 countries around the world, as well as analysing emerging trends across Europe. This presentation seeks to demonstrate that conflicts and divisions within LGBTQIA+ movements, and more specifically, in the context of the organisation of Pride Events are integral to the pursuit of a global intersectional social justice agenda, one that exceeds the current confines of LGBTQIA+ (neo)liberal politics.
